# Kevin Marsh, Director of Revenue Operations at Helio Analytics — read of deal-desk-automation-ai, May 20, 2026 > 8 years in RevOps, currently managing deal flow for a 160-person B2B SaaS at about $17M ARR, running Salesforce + Gong + a homegrown approval spreadsheet I'm embarrassed to admit still exists. ## How I got here Someone in the RevOps Co-op Slack posted a link with the caption "anyone tried this yet?" No context, no opinion, just the link. I clicked it during my commute home. I get maybe 11 minutes of actual reading time before I have to put my phone away because my 9-year-old starts asking me questions from the back seat. ## What I clicked first "Stop waiting for deal desk reviews." That landed. That is literally the complaint I hear from AEs three times a week. So I kept reading. Then I hit: "Approve or escalate in seconds. No more 'I'll get back to you.'" Fine. That is the right problem framed the right way. I was interested for about 45 seconds. ## Where I paused The testimonials. Sarah Chen, VP Sales, Enterprise Software. Marcus Rodriguez, CFO, B2B SaaS. Jennifer Park, Revenue Operations Lead. No company names. No logos. "Enterprise Software" and "B2B SaaS" are not company descriptions, they are LinkedIn category filters. Sarah's quote is "We went from 7 days to approve a deal to 3 hours." That is a genuinely compelling number. But I cannot find Sarah Chen anywhere. I did a quick LinkedIn search mid-scroll. Nothing. That is not conclusive but it puts me on edge. ## What I distrusted The bottom of the page broke the whole thing open for me. There is a scoring section labeled "How honest is this idea, really?" and it says, in plain text: "Honest disclosure: we don't have live customers on this idea yet. We shipped the strategy package; you ship the customer conversations." So I did not land on a SaaS product. I landed on someone selling me the idea of building a SaaS product. The pricing I was looking at is not a subscription to software. It is a $5 dossier, a $99 code starter, or a "hire us to build it with you" engagement. The whole hero section, the feature list, the testimonials from Sarah and Marcus, the "Start Free Trial" buttons -- none of it is a product I can trial. It is a pitch deck dressed up as a product page. "Legal review cycles drop by 60%" and "1 deal desk, unlimited deals, scale to $50M+ ARR" are claims about a thing that does not exist yet. The page also surfaces its own Fermi estimate: $-75,900 year-one take-home. Year-one take-home is negative. One in eleven odds of meaningful success. That is in the footer of a page trying to sell me on the idea. ## What would convince me Nothing on this specific page, because the product is not real. If someone actually built this and had two customers I could call, a Salesforce AppExchange listing, and a trial where I could connect our sandbox and run five historical deals through it -- then I would evaluate it. The core problem is real. The solution is plausible. But I am not in the business of funding someone else's validation sprint. ## What I'd ask in an email reply I would not email. But if I did: 1. Is there a live product I can log into today, or are you still building it? The footer was confusing. 2. How does the AI actually handle margin floor logic -- is it rules-based with an LLM wrapper, or is there actual optimization happening? Because "AI evaluates every discount request" could mean almost anything. 3. The testimonials have no company names. Are those real customers or illustrative quotes? ## Verdict: dismissive Not because the idea is bad. The idea is fine and the problem is real. But I came here looking for software to buy and found a product strategy package with a product page built around it. If the page had led with "we're building this, here is the waitlist" I would have respected it. The "Start Free Trial" button that leads to... what, exactly? That is the kind of thing that makes you feel tricked, even if it was not intentional. --- *Memo by skeptic persona, generated 2026-05-20. Studio breaks own self-grading loop.*